Adam Gorb was born in 1958 and started composing at the age of ten. At fifteen he wrote a set of piano pieces – A Pianist’s Alphabet – of which a selection were performed on BBC Radio 3. In 1977 he went to Cambridge University to study music, where his teachers included Hugh Wood and Robin Holloway. After graduating in 1980 he divided his time between composition and working as a musician in the theatre. In 1987 he started studying privately with Paul Patterson, and then with him, from 1991 at the Royal Academy of Music where he gained a MMus degree and graduated with the highest honours, including the Principal’s Prize in 1993.

Works include Metropolis for wind band, which has won several prizes including the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize in the USA in 1994. Prelude, Interlude and Postlude for piano which won the Purcell Composition Prize in 1995, Kol Simcha, a ballet given over fifty performances by the Rambert Dance Company and Awayday for Wind Band which has had several thousand performances since its premiere in 1996 and has been commercially recorded several times. A Violin Sonata was premiered at the Spitalfields Festival in London in 1996, and Reconciliation for Clarinet and Piano was commissioned for the Park Lane Young Artists New Year series. In 1998 Elements, a Percussion Concerto written for Evelyn Glennie and the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Ensemble was premiered at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and released on CD in 2001.

In 1999 his Clarinet Concerto for Nicholas Cox was given its first performance by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. 2000 saw the premiere of Weimar for large chamber ensemble. His String quartet No. 1 was premiered by the Maggini Quartet at Bromsgrove music club in February 2002. Towards Nirvana received its first performance in Japan by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Ensemble in October 2002, and went on to win a British Composer Award in 2004. Diaspora for eleven strings was given its premiere by the Goldberg Ensemble at the RNCM in February 2003, and November 2003 saw the first performance of Dances From Crete at the Royal College of Music in London.

Recent works include La Cloche Felee for soprano and piano premiered at the Purcell Room, French Dances Revisited for chamber winds in Minneapolis, USA, Burlesque for the British clarinet choir and Freedom for oboe and harp for Melinda Maxwell. All these works are available on CD. In 2006 Awakening was premiered by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester. Adrenaline City was given its first performances by the US Air Force Academy Band in the same year. 2007 saw commissions for Wind Ensemble works in Singapore and the Netherlands as well as Fasolt’s Revenge for Tuba Ensemble, which was performed at the Carnegie Hall in New York. In March 2007 the premiere of Thoughts Scribbled on a Blank Wall, based on the writings of the former political prisoner John McCarthy for bass soloist, chorus, brass quintet and organ was premiered to great acclaim in St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street. Adam Gorb’s works have been performed, broadcast and recorded world-wide. He has also been featured as composer-in-association at Luton and Bromsgrove music clubs.

Adam Gorb is a leading figure in composition education at the highest level, and since 2000 has been Head of School of Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.